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Rural parents' messages to their adolescent sons and daughters to leave their home communities
Journal of Adolescence 36 (2013) 963–970
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Rural parents’ messages to their adolescent sons and daughters to leave their home communities Corinna Jenkins Tucker a, *, Erin Hiley Sharp a, Nena F. Stracuzzi b, Karen T. Van Gundy c, Cesar Rebellon c a
Department of Family Studies, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA School of Education, Northeastern University, USA c Department of Sociology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA b
a b s t r a c t Keywords: Adolescents Parent–child relations Rural Siblings
The perceptions of 354 seventh and eleventh graders regarding the frequency and nature of their rural parents’ messages to them and their closest-in-age sibling to leave their home communities after high school were explored. Survey data showed that almost half (54%) perceived that their parents encouraged them and/or their closest-in-age sibling to leave the area and about 19% of that group reported that their parents’ messages to leave were inconsistent between them and their closest sibling. Parents’ messages did not differ by youths’ sex or age. Consistency of parents’ messages between siblings was associated with youths’ well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. Semi-structured interviews with a subsample of seventh graders and their mothers highlighted parents’ and youths’ perspectives on parents’ messages. This work highlights the familial processes associated with youth future planning and extends the current work on parents’ differential treatment of siblings. Ó 2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Adolescence is a time of preparing for the future roles and identity in adulthood (Erikson, 1968). While youths often think about their future goals related to academic, family and occupational pursuits (Nurmi, 1991), identity development also occurs within interpersonal relationships and experiences (Erikson, 1968). Parents likely play an important role in adolescents’ formation of future plans by encouraging them to think about particular pathways that will best prepare them for their future. Little is known about parents’ socialization of sons’ and daughters’ future residential preferences but parents’ role in influencing youths’ residential preferences is especially important in many rural U.S. contexts where economic troubles and social changes have created unique challenges for successful youth development (Crockett, Shanahan, & Jackson-Newsom, 2000; Johnson, Elder, & Stern, 2005). In the current study, we used quantitative and qualitative data to describe the nature of rural parents’ messages encouraging their sons and daughters to leave the area. In doing so, we explored whether parents’ messages to leave are consistent across youths and their closest-in-age sibling. We then examined the extent to which the frequency and consistency of parents’ messages across siblings was related to youths’ well-being, family relationship experiences, and their future residential preferences and how these experiences may differ by youths’ sex. Given sex differences in expectations and social roles of adults found in the literature (Eccles, 1994), we believed it likely that sons and daughters receive different messages from their parents. * Corresponding author. Department of Family Studies, University of New Hampshire, 309 Pettee Hall, Durham, NH 03824, USA. Tel.: þ1 603 862 2153; fax: þ1 603 862 3271. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (C.J. Tucker). 0140-1971/$ – see front matter Ó 2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2013.07.013
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Parents’ messages Given parents’ continued salience in adolescence, they play an important role in adolescents’ formation of their future plans. Poor economic conditions characterize many rural regions in the U.S. that were once buoyed by lucrative farming and manufacturing jobs that have since given way to service jobs that often do not pay a livable wage (Osterman, 1999). In response, some parents may encourage their children to develop plans to live elsewhere in order to seek educational and employment opportunities that provide greater possibilities for achievement and stability. Other parents, however, may not provide direction to their children about whether to leave or stay, possibly due to being distracted by their own economic constraints and pressures (Whitbeck et al., 1997). Another group of parents may believe the best choice for their children is to remain in the area and encourage them to do so. Using interview and survey data, the first goal of this study was to examine the frequency with which rural youth from economically declining mill towns report being encouraged to leave the area by their parents. The participants in the current study are growing up in rural Northern New England where, at one time, jobs at local paper mills were plentiful and a stable economic force. With the decline of the paper industry (Colocousis, 2008), the economy has shifted to service-based jobs that are often unstable and do not pay a livable wage (Dillon, 2011) and the majority of local residents are concerned about the lack of job opportunities (Colocousis & Young, 2011). These factors have likely contributed to the significant outmigration of older adolescents and young adults for the last decade in this area (Colocousis & Young, 2011). Intra-family variability in parents’ messages Despite parental norms in U.S. society that encourage equal treatment of children (McHale & Crouter, 2003; Parsons, 1974/ 1942), it is likely that siblings growing up in the same family will receive different messages from their parents regarding whether they should leave the area in the future. Parental differential treatment (PDT) of children is often viewed as a negative parenting practice, but it could be an example of sensitive and adept parenting (Kowal & Kramer, 1997) in response to each child’s individual needs (Fingerman, Miller, Birditt, & Zarit, 2009) and characteristics (e.g., age; Tucker, McHale, & Crouter, 2003). In the case of rural parents living in economically challenging circumstances, parents may encourage some of their children to leave and others to stay as a reflection of the opportunities available for children in the local area as well as children’s characteristics, or some combination thereof. Alternatively, extrapolating from Becker’s (1991) human capital theory, some parents’ PDT may be a demonstration of their differential investment across their children due to expected differences in children’s “returns” on parents’ investment (Barber & East, 2009; Foster, 2002). In stressful economic circumstances, some parents may be unable to enact parenting practices with equitable goals for each child (Fingerman et al., 2009; Zoil-Guest, Kalil, & DeLeive, 2004). In such cases, some work has shown that there is a preference for sons in intra-family allocation of family resources because of son’s potential for greater ‘returns’ as compared to daughters (Lundberg & Rose, 2004). Also, autonomous behavior, including leaving a home community, may be more of an expectation from boys than from girls (Hill & Lynch, 1983). Extending the work on PDT which has typically focused on differential warmth and discipline (e.g., Dunn, Stocker, & Plomin, 1990), the second goal of this study was to document rural parents’ differential encouragement of youth relative to their closest sibling in age to leave the area and to examine whether there were sex differences in the messages sons versus daughters perceive hearing from their parents. Parents’ messages and youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference Our third goal was to explore whether or not rural parents’ relative encouragement of their children to leave the area is linked to youths’ well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. Although the research is limited, some work with rural youth indicates that youth often view leaving their economically challenged area as desirable because of the potential educational and occupational possibilities elsewhere (Johnson et al., 2005). In this context, parents’ encouragement to leave may be viewed positively by youth because it reflects a level of parental investment and support for youths’ futures. Alternatively, parents’ messages may reflect a perception that their children can handle leaving psychologically and their strong relationships will be fine. However, we expected that youth who report being told to leave the area would report better well-being (i.e., lower depressive symptoms and higher self-esteem) and warmer family relationships (i.e., parent–child and sibling) than youth who report not being encouraged to leave (either they have been told to stay or there has been no encouragement). Because of the importance of parents’ values for adolescent development (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000), we believed that youths’ perceptions of their parents’ messages to leave the area and youths’ plans to leave in the future to be frequently congruent. Finally, because outmigration is generally viewed as desirable, we expected the link between parents’ messages and well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference to be similar for sons versus daughters. We also considered how consistency in parents’ messages across their children would be related to our variables of interest. Although PDT is not unusual and is thought at times to reflect sensitive parenting, extant evidence on PDT consistently indicates that it is associated with children’s poorer well-being (e.g., Coldwell, Pike, & Dunn, 2008) and negative family relationships (McHale, Updegraff, Jackson-Newsom, Tucker, & Crouter, 2000). Therefore, we expected that consistent messages across youth and their closest-in-age sibling to leave the area would be associated with the highest well-being, and consistent
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messages between youth and their closest-in-age sibling to stay would have the next highest well-being. We also expected that differences in parents’ relative encouragement to leave the area between youth and their closest-in-age sibling would be linked to lower youth well-being and worse family relationship experiences compared to youth who reported equal treatment (i.e., both siblings equally encouraged to leave or neither sibling is encouraged to leave). Finally, we believed that youth who perceived they were the “disfavored” child and were not encouraged to leave relative to their sibling would report the lowest functioning and relationship quality compared to youth who reported being ”favored” (i.e., told to leave) or youth who reported equal treatment (McHale et al., 2000). In terms of future residential preference, however, we expected rural youth who perceived that their parents’ encouraged them to leave (regardless of whether this message was conveyed similarly or not to their closest-in-age sibling) would be more likely to think about leaving the area in the future than youths who did not believe their parents encouraged them to leave. In summary, we used survey and interview data from a sample of rural youth and their mothers to explore: 1) the extent to which parents encouraged their children to leave the area; 2) how frequently this message was consistent across youth relative to their closest-in-age sibling; and 3) how the nature and consistency of parents’ messages was linked to youths’ wellbeing, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. Our exploration of each of these goals included considering whether there were sex differences in youths’ experiences. Unlike previous studies of rural youth which has focused on farm families, our sample lives in Northern New England mill towns. Method Sample The quantitative sample included 354 youth in the 7th (n ¼ 205) and 11th grades (n ¼ 149) who averaged 14.20 (SD ¼ 2.00) years old from each of the nine public schools in a northern county of New Hampshire, and who had at least one sibling. Youth were approximately evenly divided by sex and, representing the region, were mostly European-American (94%). Youth reported an average number of two siblings (SD ¼ 1.07) but the largest percentage of families (43%) had two children (range 2– 12), 92% of which were full or part biologically-related. Seventy percent of reporting youth were either a first- or second-born. Siblings were on average 3.4 (SD ¼ 2.5) years apart and about half were female (48%). About half of youths’ parents were married (57%) and, reflective of the region, a minority of the parents had at least a bachelor’s degree (mothers: 29% and fathers: 19%). Common occupations for parents included working in education, hospitality, local businesses, and forestry. The interview sample was drawn using a purposive sampling strategy (Miles & Huberman, 1994) from a list of seventh grade youth participating in the first wave of the larger study. The younger cohort was chosen as the focus of our qualitative work, due in part to financial constraints of the study. Selection of youth was based on sex and geography within the expansive county in an effort to reflect their proportion in the larger sample. Only mothers were interviewed to reduce mother-father parenting effects. Twenty-five seventh graders (13 female) and their mothers were interviewed (24 complete youth–mother pairs; 1 youth interview was lost). The qualitative subsample of youth did not differ significantly from the larger sample of 7th and 11th graders with regard to age, sex, and parents’ education level. Procedure Letters describing the study were distributed to youth in school. Parents who did not want their child to participate completed a form attached to the letter and returned it to their child’s teacher. During a designated time at school, students gave assent and filled out the confidential survey, which typically took 30–45 min to complete. Students received a gift card to a local business for their participation. The larger sample, which includes an additional 54 youth without a sibling, represented an 83% response rate and is considered excellent for a school-based study (Henry, Smith, & Hopkins, 2002). As part of the quantitative survey, seventh-grade youth indicated their interest in participating in interviews and provided contact information. In an effort to contextualize youths’ responses, add richness to youths’ answers on the questionnaire, and help us gain perspective from parents, we conducted separate semi-structured interviews with participants in their homes. Although all interviews were directed by the interview guidelines, conversations were not limited to the scheduled questions; we allowed stories to unfold naturally and encouraged respondents to discuss anything that was particularly salient for them. Trained interviewers audio-taped the interviews, which lasted approximately sixty minutes each, and participants received a gift card to a local business as compensation; interviews were transcribed verbatim. While inductive data analysis techniques have been employed for our in-depth data, for the purposes of this paper, quotes are used for illustrative purposes, reflecting themes specifically relating to those explored in quantitative data analysis. In presenting results we integrate qualitative narratives when they can be used to increase understanding of quantitative findings. Measures Youth responded to questions about themselves and their family’s characteristics (e.g., demographics, parents’ marital status). Youth indicated whether they had a sibling, and if so,answered all sibling-related questions about their sibling closest in age. Family SES was determined by adolescents’ reports of mothers’ education levels (1 ¼ high school or less; 2 ¼ some college or associates degree; 3 ¼ bachelor’s degree or higher).
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Parents’ messages to leave the area Parents’ messages to leave the area were assessed by youths’ response to one item: “Are you and your closest sibling in age equally encouraged by your parents (or guardians) to think about leaving the community?” Youth indicated 1 ¼ Yes, equally, 2 ¼ No, me more, 3 ¼ No, my sibling more, or 4 ¼ Neither of us. These groupings were maintained for analyses and are commonly used when assessing PDT. Chi-squared analyses that explored differences in the four categories of parents’ messages (i.e., Yes, Equal; Me More; Sibling More; Neither) by youth sex, grade level, parents’ marital status, and mother’s education level were not significant. A cross-check between what youth reported for this survey item and the nature of mother’s messages revealed in the qualitative interviews (which did not directly ask about the four possible message categories) was high and showed a 78% overlap. Youth well-being Youth well-being was determined by measures of self-esteem and depressive symptoms. Four items (adapted from Rosenberg, 1979) measured self-esteem (e.g., “I have a number of good qualities”) on a scale ranging from 0 ¼ Strongly disagree through 3 ¼ Strongly agree. The alpha was .82. Depressive symptoms were indexed by seven items (adapted from the CES-D; Radloff, 1977). For example, youth indicated in the last six months how often they felt sad on a 4-point scale (0 ¼ Not at all through 3 ¼ Almost all the time). The alpha was .84. Parent and sibling relationship warmth Parent and sibling relationship warmth was measured by two scales. Parent–child warmth (adapted from Johnson et al., 2005) was a composite of eight items (four for each parent) that included items such as “I feel close to my mother/father” and “I really enjoy spending time with my mother/father” which were rated on a five-point scale (1 ¼ Strongly disagree through 5 ¼ Strongly agree; alpha ¼ .74). Youths’ reports of sibling warmth were measured by five items adapted from Kramer and Baron (1985). Youth responded to items such as “I feel close to my brother/sister” on a four-point scale (1 ¼ Not at all through 4 ¼ A lot). The alpha was .87. Future residential plans Youths’ future residential plans were determined by four items asking youth how important it is to “live in the town you grew up in” and “leave this area” and the likelihood of “leaving the area” and “staying in the area” on a seven-point scale (0 ¼ not at all important/likely through 6 ¼ very important/likely). Items were coded so that a higher score indicated youth planned on leaving the area. The alpha was .71. Analysis plan Our analyses of the qualitative data included developing coding categories through our immersion in multiple close readings of the transcripts as well as our a priori substantive interest regarding parents’ encouragement of their children to leave or stay in the area (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Two trained independent coders closely reviewed each interview transcript for the defined substantive categories (e.g., leave the area, leave and return, stay in the area). This detailed reading allowed the coders to isolate all narratives that exemplified certain points or associations related to youth leaving or staying in the area. For example, within the category of ‘leave the area’ concepts related to ‘getting out’, moving out of the area, and a need to leave for economic opportunities emerged. The three categories were analyzed for similarities and differences between experiences and ideas in a process aimed at informing the broader framework of findings. Throughout the process, we sought to maintain a clear framework that would provide a faithful expression of the participants’ messages regarding their own or their children’s future. Two independent coders of the text had high inter-rater agreement (above 80%) and met to discuss any discrepancies in interpretation. Code-recode reliability was greater than 95%. Using the quantitative data, we first describe youths’ perceptions of the nature of parents’ messages to leave the area, highlighting the frequency of parents’ different messages and the consistency in parents’ messages to their children. To help understand the nature of parents’ messages and perhaps why parents give particular messages to their children participating in our study, we turned to the qualitative interviews. One-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for parents’ marital status, mothers’ education level, sibling age gap, and number of siblings was conducted with the quantitative data to examine the links between parents’ messages and our three outcome variables of youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. These analyses further examined whether parental messages interact with sex such that the above relationships differ for males and females. Tukey follow-up tests were conducted to interpret significant effects and Cohen’s d statistic (Cohen, 1988) was calculated as a measure of effect size. Results Frequency and nature of parents’ messages A frequency analysis of youths’ perceptions of their parents’ messages to them and their closest sibling to leave the area showed that 54% (n ¼ 188) believed that their parents encouraged either one or both of them to leave the area while 46% (n ¼ 159) perceived that their parents did not encourage one or both of them to leave the area (see Table 1). Of the group of
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Table 1 Percents and ns of parents’ encouragement to youth and their closest sibling to leave the area groups (N ¼ 334). Leave (n ¼ 188)
Stay (n ¼ 146)
Yes, both equally told to leave (35%; n ¼ 122) Youth encouraged more than sibling (11%; n ¼ 37) Sibling encouraged more than youth (8%; n ¼ 29) Total % 54
Neither told to leave (n ¼ 146)
46
youth that reported being encouraged to leave the area (n ¼ 188), 122 of them reported that their parents gave this message equally to them and their closest sibling in age. A larger percentage of the mothers who participated in the interviews indicated that they encouraged their children to leave the area compared to youths’ survey reports of parents’ messages (almost three-fourths, n ¼ 19, compared to 54% of the survey data). Interviewed mothers often cited economic opportunity as their reason for encouraging their children to leave. One mother said: “You know, I know it’s.what the salary range is up here. And if they want to make money, this is not the place to do it.” Youth also seemed to have this perspective as well. For example, one female youth said: “You stay home and have kids and there’s the work force.cashiers, I don’t want to be that. I want to go farther than that.” Another mother said: “There’s so much more out there. And he’d have more opportunities if he wasn’t here. And it would break my heart the day he leaves, but I want him to succeed and be happy.” A youth said: “They [her parents] want me to go. They just want me to try my hardest so I can make sure I go..” Finally, another mother relayed her reasoning in terms of encouraging adolescent identity exploration: “No. I don’t want her to stay in the area. I want her to leave after high school and if she wants to return after that that’s fine. But I want her to go and see other things. I think it would be a good experience.” Representing 19% of the survey participants reporting being encouraged to leave the area by their parents were youth who indicated that their parents’ messages were inconsistent between them and their closest sibling. Thirty-seven youth reported they were more encouraged by their parents to leave the area than was their closest sibling (11%). Twenty-nine youth (8%) indicated that their sibling closest in age was encouraged more by their parents to leave the area than were they. When asked by the interviewer if his parents talked to him about future plans, one youth replied, “Not really. They’re more focused on him (middle brother).” Two mothers specifically mentioned PDT in the qualitative interviews. A mother of a son and a daughter stated her reasons why she had given differential messages to her children in the following way: I don’t see him succeeding in.see, if he doesn’t get out, he’s going to be flipping burgers.She could stay here and.she would get like an LNE (Licensed Nurse Education) license or work with the elderly, or be on a committee or something like that. Another mother, when asked if she would encourage her children to stay in the area, said: I would .with her, yes, with my son, no. Because my son wants to be a paleontologist.he wants to go to school. So he knows where he wants to go and what he has to do. She’s still up in the air. She could be a vet [or] a teacher. Those are things you can do up here. Although sex differences did not emerge in the survey question about the likelihood of being encouraged to leave the area, evidence from some of the interviews suggest that child characteristics may be linked to parents’ differential messages among siblings. Forty-six percent of surveyed youth (n ¼ 164) reported that their parents had neither encouraged them nor their sibling to leave the area. One mother said: “What I hope, I hope he does what he wants to do. Um, I don’t ever think about.I don’t transfer my hopes onto my kids.” Another mother echoed that same sentiment: “It’s all up to him. It would be nice to have him close, but if he didn’t want to, I would support him, anywhere he wants to.” One youth seemed to echo this mother’s belief, “Uh, no. They support my decisions and that’s why they bought me books and that’s why they bought me the camera because they, you know, want me to explore my ideas, explore my thoughts.” Three of the mothers from the qualitative sample had encouraged their children to stay. When the interviewer asked one mother about her goals for her son, she replied: “Farming.I see him in this area. I don’t picture him going anywhere.” Three of the mothers who participated in the qualitative interviews were unsure whether they wanted their child to stay or to leave the community. Parents’ messages and youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference The ANCOVAs exploring differences in self-esteem and depressive symptoms by the four groups of parents’ messages of encouragement to leave the area (Yes, Equal; Me More; Sibling More; Neither) were significant (F (11, 337) ¼ 3.53, p < .001; F (11, 337) ¼ 4.09, p < .001, respectively). Youths’ self-esteem was higher in the Yes, Equal and Neither groups than in the Me More and Sibling More groups, suggesting consistency in parents’ messages was associated with greater youth self-esteem (d’s ranged from .42 to .64). Although the model was significant for the depressive symptoms analysis, the effect for parents’ messages was nonsignificant (see Table 2). The interaction terms between parents’ messages and youth sex were nonsignificant in both models.
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Table 2 Means and standard deviations of youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference by parents’ encouragement to youth and their closest sibling to leave the area groups. Variable
Self-esteem Depressive symptoms P–C warmth Sibling warmth Future residence
Yes, equal (n ¼ 122)
Me more (n ¼ 37)
Sibling more (n ¼ 29)
Neither (n ¼ 159)
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
2.37a .80a 3.73a 2.67a 3.57ac
.55 .60 .78 .80 1.35
2.01b 1.08a 3.39a 2.14b 3.91a
.58 .72 .78 .98 1.25
2.09b .67a 3.68a 2.57a 3.20c
.67 .43 .70 .79 1.26
2.36a .82a 3.75a 2.65a 3.15bc
.61 .63 .72 .82 1.43
Note: Means sharing a common superscript are not statistically different from one another.
The models for warmth in the parent–child and sibling relationships were significant (F (11, 337) ¼ 2.45, p ¼ .01; F (11, 337) ¼ 3.47, p < .001, respectively). Although the main effect for parents’ messages and the interaction between parents’ messages and youth sex were nonsignificant predictors in the parent warmth model, a main effect for parents’ messages was significant in the model of sibling warmth. Follow-up tests showed that those youth in the Me More group reported the lowest warmth with their closest sibling compared to youth in the Yes, Equal, Sibling More, and Neither groups (d’s ranged from .54 to .67), perhaps indicating that being singled out by parents’ encouragement to leave the area may have implications for, or is the result of, less warmth in sibling relationships (see Table 2). The interaction term between parents’ message group and youth sex was nonsignificant. Youth reported that they were more likely to leave the area after high school if they and their closest sibling were equally encouraged to leave by their parents (F (11, 337) ¼ 2.69, p ¼ .002) than if neither of them were encouraged (d ¼ .30). In addition, youth who were encouraged to leave more than their closest sibling were less likely to want to stay in the area than youth in the Sibling More and Neither (d’s ¼ .57) groups (see Table 2). The Parent message X Youth sex interaction term was nonsignficant. Information from the qualitative interviews also highlights this congruence among parents’ messages and youths’ future residential plans: Of the 24 interviews for which we had complete interview data from mother and child, 17 (71%) demonstrated similarity in parent messages and youths’ future plans. For example, one mother said of her son “For economics in this town, there’s not a lot to offer if you stay here” and when her son was asked of his future plans he replied “I would like to move away.” Inspection of the future residential plans variable showed that about half of the youth indicated that they wanted to leave the area in the future. Discussion For the rural adolescents in the current study, their identity development and future plans are influenced by the decadeslong challenging economic and social conditions in their home towns that likely limit opportunities for youth success in adulthood. Because identity development takes place within interpersonal relationships (Erikson, 1968), rural parents have an important socializing role in youths’ decisions regarding youths’ future plans. In the current study, by using a quantitative survey and an in-depth qualitative approach, we were able to employ a nuanced approach to shed light on rural parents’ relative encouragement of their children to leave the area and how the pattern of congruence among parents’ messages is linked to their adolescent children’s well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference. Importantly, caution is warranted about making conclusions about the direction of effects due to our cross-sectional data. Consistent with extant studies, we posited that parents’ messages predict well-being, family relationship experiences and future residential preference. It is possible, however, that the nature of the relationship between parents’ messages and our outcomes of interest is bi-directional. Ultimately, longitudinal data are required to better understand the relationships between these variables. About half of youth reported that their parents encouraged them to leave the area, and the frequency of this message did not differ by sex. Our qualitative data suggested parents encouraged their children to leave due to the area’s lack of stable and economically rewarding opportunities in the local area (N.H. Dept. of Labor, 2007). Though not the focus of our study, it is worth mentioning that parents’ messages did not differ by mothers’ educational status. This finding could be due to a number of possibilities. As noted previously, parents may or may not provide direction to their children about whether to leave or stay because they are distracted by their own economic pressures (Whitbeck et al., 1997) or, as indicated by this study, parents may have a belief in not interfering in their children’s future planning. Also, it may be that the economic conditions of the area may be more relevant than families’ own economic status. Our work provides insights into parental socialization of rural youths’ future residential preferences but should be considered preliminary because our sample is drawn from northern New Hampshire and should not be considered to be representative of the economic conditions, typical occupations, and ethnicity that characterize other rural areas in the U.S. (Hamilton, Hamilton, Duncan, & Colocousis, 2008). In addition, the nature of the information garnered from our qualitative subsample may be limited by our exclusion of 11th graders and their mothers who may be having more detailed conversations about the future than would seventh grade youth and their parents. However, our qualitative data did show that parents and their children are having these kinds of conversations as early as seventh grade. In this study, we explored a new domain of PDT: parents’ differential encouragement of siblings to leave their home communities. A strength of this study was our use of youths’ reports of PDT because parents overestimate equal treatment of
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their children (Atzaba-Poria & Pike, 2008; Coldwell et al., 2008) and children’s reports of PDT are more closely connected to their psychosocial functioning (Coldwell et al., 2008). Our large sample enabled us to find infrequent but important and distinct intra-family variations in PDT (Barber & East, 2009; Foster, 2002) with 19% of youth reporting inconsistency in parents’ messages to leave the area across youth and their closest sibling. The qualitative data provided some insight into parents’ reasoning for giving different messages across children that reflect the possible influence of child characteristics. Although no sex differences emerged in the survey item assessing parents’ encouragement to leave the area, information from the qualitative interviews suggest that youth sex may play a role in parents’ motivations to encourage their children to stay or leave the community. Due to the limits of our data, however, it is unclear whether youths’ perceptions of rural parents’ differential encouragement of their children to leave the area reflect a parenting investment strategy (Becker, 1991) in the child parents believed would be most successful and provide support to them in the future. Future work could explicitly explore the reasons parents give their children differential encouragement to leave the area. Also, future studies could explore the extent of PDT for all siblings in the family. Most of the families in our study had only two children and our work was limited by our inability to capture the PDT of parental messages for those siblings in larger families. Our findings suggest that the consistency of parents’ messages mattered more than the nature of parents’ messages for youths’ well-being and family relationship experiences. Equal treatment of youth and their closest sibling, regardless of the presence or absence of the messages to leave the area, was associated with youths’ better well-being and positive family relationship experiences. In those families characterized by PDT, youth reported lower psychosocial functioning relative to youth who reported equal treatment. This pattern was surprising for youth who reported being the child encouraged by their parents to leave the area given that other studies have reported that leaving the area is viewed favorably by rural youth (Johnson et al., 2005). PDT, however, has frequently been linked to lower well-being and negative family relationship quality (e.g., McHale et al., 2000). Because siblings are a constant and natural point of social comparison in the family (McHale, Kim, & Whiteman, 2006), perceptions of favoritism may be a particularly powerful influence on youths’ psychosocial functioning regardless of the extent of positivity in each child’s parent–child relationship. Our work provides new insights into PDT and highlights the indirect effect siblings can have on each other through their influence on each other’s family experiences and roles. Our data, however, were limited because we only had data from one child per family and our analyses of the quantitative data were exclusively based on youths’ self reports. To fully capture the varied experiences of children within the same family, future work could include reports of well-being and family relationship experiences from multiple family members to limit the effects of shared method variance. Extending the work on parents’ role in youths’ future occupational and academic plans (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuk, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001), our findings showed that rural parents’ messages to their children to leave the area are connected to youths’ reports of their future residential preferences. The perceived similarity of parents and youths’ views may indicate that parents’ messages play an important role in rural youth outmigration trends (Heath, 2004). Conversely, because we are limited by our cross-sectional data, the pattern of findings may indicate that parents’ messages merely reflect a youth’s decision to leave the area or how well youth are doing. Future work could explore both mothers’ and fathers’ messages and the extent to which the congruence in parents’ messages are associated with youths’ future residential preferences in other rural areas of the U.S. The current study represents one of the first attempts to understand the familial processes by which rural youth choose to leave their home communities. Our investigation was enhanced by survey and interview data enabling us to offer insights into parental socialization of rural youths’ future residential preferences. Although sex differences did not emerge, the study’s findings showed that the nature and consistency of rural parents’ messages to their children have important links to youth well-being and family experiences. Our work also extends the current work on PDT by exploring a new domain of PDT in a rural, economically-vulnerable context. Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and the Carsey Institute. We are grateful to the parents and youth who participated in this project. We thank Meghan Mills and Bridget Farmer for help with analyses and Eleanor Jaffee and a team of graduate and undergraduate students for their help with data collection and entry. References Atzaba-Poria, N., & Pike, A. (2008). Correlates of parental differential treatment: parental and contextual factors during middle childhood. Child Development, 79, 217–232. Barber, J. S., & East, P. L. (2009). Home and parenting resources available to siblings depending on their birth intention status. Child Development, 80, 921– 939. Becker, G. S. (1991). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Coldwell, J., Pike, A., & Dunn, J. (2008). Maternal differential treatment and child adjustment: a multi-informant approach. Social Development, 17, 596–612. Collins, W. A., Maccoby, E. E., Steinberg, L., Hetherington, E. M., & Bornstein, M. H. (2000). Contemporary research on parenting: the case for nature and nurture. American Psychologist, 55(2), 218–232. Colocousis, C. R. (2008). The state of Coos county: Local perspectives on community and change. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, The Carsey Institute (Issue Brief No. 7).
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Colocousis, C. R., & Young, J. R. (2011). Continuity and change in Coos county: Results from the 2010 North CERA survey. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, The Carsey Institute (Issue Brief No. 26). Crockett, L. J., Shanahan, M. J., & Jackson-Newsom, J. (2000). Rural youth: ecological and life course perspectives. In R. Montemayor, G. R. Adams, & T. P. Gullotta (Eds.), Adolescent diversity in ethnic, economic, and cultural contexts: Vol. 10. Advances in adolescent development (pp. 43–74). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Dillon, M. (2011). Stretching ties: Social capital in the rebranding of Coos county. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, The Carsey Institute (Issue Brief No. 27). Dunn, J., Stocker, C., & Plomin, R. (1990). Non-shared experiences within the family: correlates of behavioral problems in middle childhood. Development and Psychopathology, 2, 113–126. Eccles, J. (1994). Understanding women’s educational and occupational choices: applying the Eccles et al. model of achievement-related choices. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18, 585–609. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: Norton. Fingerman, K., Miller, L., Birditt, K., & Zarit, S. (2009). Giving to the good and the needy: parental support of grown children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 71, 1220–1233. Foster, E. M. (2002). How economists think about family resources and child development. Child Development, 70, 1904–1914. Hamilton, L. C., Hamilton, L. R., Duncan, C. M., & Colocousis, C. R. (2008). Reports on Rural America. Place matters: Challenges and opportunities in four rural Americas (Vol. 1). Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, The Carsey Institute. Number 4. Heath, S. B. (2004). Risks, rules, and roles: youth perspectives on the work of learning for community development. In A. Perret-Clermont, C. Pontecorvo, L. B. Resnick, T. Zittoun, & B. Burge (Eds.), Joining society: Social interaction and learning in adolescence and youth (pp. 41–70). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Henry, K. L., Smith, E. A., & Hopkins, A. M. (2002). The effect of active parental consent on the ability to generalize the results of an alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention trial to rural adolescents. Evaluation Review, 26, 645–655. Hill, J. P., & Lynch, M. E. (1983). The intensification of gender-related role expectations during early adolescence. In J. Brooks-Gunn, & A. C. Peterson (Eds.), Girls at puberty: Biological and psychosocial perspectives (pp. 201–228). New York: Plenum. Jodl, K. M., Michael, A., Malanchuk, O., Eccles, J. S., & Sameroff, A. (2001). Parents’ roles in shaping early adolescents’ occupational aspirations. Child Development, 72, 1247–1265. Johnson, M. K., Elder, G. H., & Stern, M. (2005). Attachments to family and community and the young adult transition of rural youth. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 15, 99–125. Kowal, A., & Kramer, L. (1997). Children’s understanding of parental differential treatment. Child Development, 68, 113–126. Kramer, L., & Baron, L. A. (1985). Parental perceptions of children’s sibling relationships. Family Relations, 44, 95–103. Lundberg, S., & Rose, E. (2004). Investments in sons and daughters: evidence for the consumer expenditure survey. In A. Kalil, & T. DeLeire (Eds.), Family investments in children’s potential: Resources and parenting behaviors that promote success (pp. 163–180). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. McHale, S. M., & Crouter, A. C. (2003). How do children exert an impact on family life? In A. C. Crouter, & A. Booth (Eds.), Children’s influence on family dynamics: The neglected side of family relationships (pp. 207–220) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. McHale, S. M., Kim, J., & Whiteman, S. W. (2006). Sibling relationships in childhood and adolescence. In P. Noller, & J. Feenet (Eds.), Close Relationships: Functions, forms, & processes (pp. 127–149). Hove, England: Psychology Press. McHale, S. M., Updegraff, K. A., Jackson-Newsom, J., Tucker, C. J., & Crouter, A. C. (2000). When does parents’ differential treatment have negative implications for siblings? Social Development, 9, 149–172. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. NH Department of Labor. (November, 2007). National emergency grant regional innovation grant proposal. Retrieved from http://www.nhworks.org/ RIGMasterDocument.pdf. Nurmi, J. E. (1991). How do adolescents see their future? A review of the development of future orientation and planning. Developmental Review, 11, 1–59. Osterman, P. (1999). Securing prosperity: The American labor market: How it has changed and what to do about it. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Parsons, T. (1974/1942). Age and sex in social structure. In R. L. Coser (Ed.), The family: Its structures and functions (pp. 243–255). New York: St. Martins (Originally published in American Sociological Review, 7, 604-616). Radloff, L. S. (1977). The CES-D Scale: a self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385–401. Rosenberg, M. O. (1979). Conceiving the self. New York: Basic Books. Tucker, C. J., McHale, S. M., & Crouter, A. C. (2003). Dimensions of mothers’ and fathers’ differential treatment of siblings: links with adolescents’ sex-typed personal qualities. Family Relations, 52, 82–89. Whitbeck, L. B., Simons, R. L., Conger, R. D., Wickrama, K. A. S., Ackley, K. A., & Elder, G. H. (1997). The effects of parents’ working conditions and family economic hardship on parenting behaviors and children’s self-efficacy. Social Psychology Quarterly, 60(4), 291–303. Zoil-Guest, K. M., Kalil, A., & DeLeive, T. (2004). Expenditure decisions in single-parent households. In A. Kalil, & T. Deleire (Eds.), Family investments in children’s potential: Resources and parenting behaviors that promote success (pp. 181–208). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Journal of Adolescence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jado
Rural parents’ messages to their adolescent sons and daughters to leave their home communities Corinna Jenkins Tucker a, *, Erin Hiley Sharp a, Nena F. Stracuzzi b, Karen T. Van Gundy c, Cesar Rebellon c a
Department of Family Studies, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA School of Education, Northeastern University, USA c Department of Sociology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA b
a b s t r a c t Keywords: Adolescents Parent–child relations Rural Siblings
The perceptions of 354 seventh and eleventh graders regarding the frequency and nature of their rural parents’ messages to them and their closest-in-age sibling to leave their home communities after high school were explored. Survey data showed that almost half (54%) perceived that their parents encouraged them and/or their closest-in-age sibling to leave the area and about 19% of that group reported that their parents’ messages to leave were inconsistent between them and their closest sibling. Parents’ messages did not differ by youths’ sex or age. Consistency of parents’ messages between siblings was associated with youths’ well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. Semi-structured interviews with a subsample of seventh graders and their mothers highlighted parents’ and youths’ perspectives on parents’ messages. This work highlights the familial processes associated with youth future planning and extends the current work on parents’ differential treatment of siblings. Ó 2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Adolescence is a time of preparing for the future roles and identity in adulthood (Erikson, 1968). While youths often think about their future goals related to academic, family and occupational pursuits (Nurmi, 1991), identity development also occurs within interpersonal relationships and experiences (Erikson, 1968). Parents likely play an important role in adolescents’ formation of future plans by encouraging them to think about particular pathways that will best prepare them for their future. Little is known about parents’ socialization of sons’ and daughters’ future residential preferences but parents’ role in influencing youths’ residential preferences is especially important in many rural U.S. contexts where economic troubles and social changes have created unique challenges for successful youth development (Crockett, Shanahan, & Jackson-Newsom, 2000; Johnson, Elder, & Stern, 2005). In the current study, we used quantitative and qualitative data to describe the nature of rural parents’ messages encouraging their sons and daughters to leave the area. In doing so, we explored whether parents’ messages to leave are consistent across youths and their closest-in-age sibling. We then examined the extent to which the frequency and consistency of parents’ messages across siblings was related to youths’ well-being, family relationship experiences, and their future residential preferences and how these experiences may differ by youths’ sex. Given sex differences in expectations and social roles of adults found in the literature (Eccles, 1994), we believed it likely that sons and daughters receive different messages from their parents. * Corresponding author. Department of Family Studies, University of New Hampshire, 309 Pettee Hall, Durham, NH 03824, USA. Tel.: þ1 603 862 2153; fax: þ1 603 862 3271. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (C.J. Tucker). 0140-1971/$ – see front matter Ó 2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2013.07.013
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Parents’ messages Given parents’ continued salience in adolescence, they play an important role in adolescents’ formation of their future plans. Poor economic conditions characterize many rural regions in the U.S. that were once buoyed by lucrative farming and manufacturing jobs that have since given way to service jobs that often do not pay a livable wage (Osterman, 1999). In response, some parents may encourage their children to develop plans to live elsewhere in order to seek educational and employment opportunities that provide greater possibilities for achievement and stability. Other parents, however, may not provide direction to their children about whether to leave or stay, possibly due to being distracted by their own economic constraints and pressures (Whitbeck et al., 1997). Another group of parents may believe the best choice for their children is to remain in the area and encourage them to do so. Using interview and survey data, the first goal of this study was to examine the frequency with which rural youth from economically declining mill towns report being encouraged to leave the area by their parents. The participants in the current study are growing up in rural Northern New England where, at one time, jobs at local paper mills were plentiful and a stable economic force. With the decline of the paper industry (Colocousis, 2008), the economy has shifted to service-based jobs that are often unstable and do not pay a livable wage (Dillon, 2011) and the majority of local residents are concerned about the lack of job opportunities (Colocousis & Young, 2011). These factors have likely contributed to the significant outmigration of older adolescents and young adults for the last decade in this area (Colocousis & Young, 2011). Intra-family variability in parents’ messages Despite parental norms in U.S. society that encourage equal treatment of children (McHale & Crouter, 2003; Parsons, 1974/ 1942), it is likely that siblings growing up in the same family will receive different messages from their parents regarding whether they should leave the area in the future. Parental differential treatment (PDT) of children is often viewed as a negative parenting practice, but it could be an example of sensitive and adept parenting (Kowal & Kramer, 1997) in response to each child’s individual needs (Fingerman, Miller, Birditt, & Zarit, 2009) and characteristics (e.g., age; Tucker, McHale, & Crouter, 2003). In the case of rural parents living in economically challenging circumstances, parents may encourage some of their children to leave and others to stay as a reflection of the opportunities available for children in the local area as well as children’s characteristics, or some combination thereof. Alternatively, extrapolating from Becker’s (1991) human capital theory, some parents’ PDT may be a demonstration of their differential investment across their children due to expected differences in children’s “returns” on parents’ investment (Barber & East, 2009; Foster, 2002). In stressful economic circumstances, some parents may be unable to enact parenting practices with equitable goals for each child (Fingerman et al., 2009; Zoil-Guest, Kalil, & DeLeive, 2004). In such cases, some work has shown that there is a preference for sons in intra-family allocation of family resources because of son’s potential for greater ‘returns’ as compared to daughters (Lundberg & Rose, 2004). Also, autonomous behavior, including leaving a home community, may be more of an expectation from boys than from girls (Hill & Lynch, 1983). Extending the work on PDT which has typically focused on differential warmth and discipline (e.g., Dunn, Stocker, & Plomin, 1990), the second goal of this study was to document rural parents’ differential encouragement of youth relative to their closest sibling in age to leave the area and to examine whether there were sex differences in the messages sons versus daughters perceive hearing from their parents. Parents’ messages and youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference Our third goal was to explore whether or not rural parents’ relative encouragement of their children to leave the area is linked to youths’ well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. Although the research is limited, some work with rural youth indicates that youth often view leaving their economically challenged area as desirable because of the potential educational and occupational possibilities elsewhere (Johnson et al., 2005). In this context, parents’ encouragement to leave may be viewed positively by youth because it reflects a level of parental investment and support for youths’ futures. Alternatively, parents’ messages may reflect a perception that their children can handle leaving psychologically and their strong relationships will be fine. However, we expected that youth who report being told to leave the area would report better well-being (i.e., lower depressive symptoms and higher self-esteem) and warmer family relationships (i.e., parent–child and sibling) than youth who report not being encouraged to leave (either they have been told to stay or there has been no encouragement). Because of the importance of parents’ values for adolescent development (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000), we believed that youths’ perceptions of their parents’ messages to leave the area and youths’ plans to leave in the future to be frequently congruent. Finally, because outmigration is generally viewed as desirable, we expected the link between parents’ messages and well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference to be similar for sons versus daughters. We also considered how consistency in parents’ messages across their children would be related to our variables of interest. Although PDT is not unusual and is thought at times to reflect sensitive parenting, extant evidence on PDT consistently indicates that it is associated with children’s poorer well-being (e.g., Coldwell, Pike, & Dunn, 2008) and negative family relationships (McHale, Updegraff, Jackson-Newsom, Tucker, & Crouter, 2000). Therefore, we expected that consistent messages across youth and their closest-in-age sibling to leave the area would be associated with the highest well-being, and consistent
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messages between youth and their closest-in-age sibling to stay would have the next highest well-being. We also expected that differences in parents’ relative encouragement to leave the area between youth and their closest-in-age sibling would be linked to lower youth well-being and worse family relationship experiences compared to youth who reported equal treatment (i.e., both siblings equally encouraged to leave or neither sibling is encouraged to leave). Finally, we believed that youth who perceived they were the “disfavored” child and were not encouraged to leave relative to their sibling would report the lowest functioning and relationship quality compared to youth who reported being ”favored” (i.e., told to leave) or youth who reported equal treatment (McHale et al., 2000). In terms of future residential preference, however, we expected rural youth who perceived that their parents’ encouraged them to leave (regardless of whether this message was conveyed similarly or not to their closest-in-age sibling) would be more likely to think about leaving the area in the future than youths who did not believe their parents encouraged them to leave. In summary, we used survey and interview data from a sample of rural youth and their mothers to explore: 1) the extent to which parents encouraged their children to leave the area; 2) how frequently this message was consistent across youth relative to their closest-in-age sibling; and 3) how the nature and consistency of parents’ messages was linked to youths’ wellbeing, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. Our exploration of each of these goals included considering whether there were sex differences in youths’ experiences. Unlike previous studies of rural youth which has focused on farm families, our sample lives in Northern New England mill towns. Method Sample The quantitative sample included 354 youth in the 7th (n ¼ 205) and 11th grades (n ¼ 149) who averaged 14.20 (SD ¼ 2.00) years old from each of the nine public schools in a northern county of New Hampshire, and who had at least one sibling. Youth were approximately evenly divided by sex and, representing the region, were mostly European-American (94%). Youth reported an average number of two siblings (SD ¼ 1.07) but the largest percentage of families (43%) had two children (range 2– 12), 92% of which were full or part biologically-related. Seventy percent of reporting youth were either a first- or second-born. Siblings were on average 3.4 (SD ¼ 2.5) years apart and about half were female (48%). About half of youths’ parents were married (57%) and, reflective of the region, a minority of the parents had at least a bachelor’s degree (mothers: 29% and fathers: 19%). Common occupations for parents included working in education, hospitality, local businesses, and forestry. The interview sample was drawn using a purposive sampling strategy (Miles & Huberman, 1994) from a list of seventh grade youth participating in the first wave of the larger study. The younger cohort was chosen as the focus of our qualitative work, due in part to financial constraints of the study. Selection of youth was based on sex and geography within the expansive county in an effort to reflect their proportion in the larger sample. Only mothers were interviewed to reduce mother-father parenting effects. Twenty-five seventh graders (13 female) and their mothers were interviewed (24 complete youth–mother pairs; 1 youth interview was lost). The qualitative subsample of youth did not differ significantly from the larger sample of 7th and 11th graders with regard to age, sex, and parents’ education level. Procedure Letters describing the study were distributed to youth in school. Parents who did not want their child to participate completed a form attached to the letter and returned it to their child’s teacher. During a designated time at school, students gave assent and filled out the confidential survey, which typically took 30–45 min to complete. Students received a gift card to a local business for their participation. The larger sample, which includes an additional 54 youth without a sibling, represented an 83% response rate and is considered excellent for a school-based study (Henry, Smith, & Hopkins, 2002). As part of the quantitative survey, seventh-grade youth indicated their interest in participating in interviews and provided contact information. In an effort to contextualize youths’ responses, add richness to youths’ answers on the questionnaire, and help us gain perspective from parents, we conducted separate semi-structured interviews with participants in their homes. Although all interviews were directed by the interview guidelines, conversations were not limited to the scheduled questions; we allowed stories to unfold naturally and encouraged respondents to discuss anything that was particularly salient for them. Trained interviewers audio-taped the interviews, which lasted approximately sixty minutes each, and participants received a gift card to a local business as compensation; interviews were transcribed verbatim. While inductive data analysis techniques have been employed for our in-depth data, for the purposes of this paper, quotes are used for illustrative purposes, reflecting themes specifically relating to those explored in quantitative data analysis. In presenting results we integrate qualitative narratives when they can be used to increase understanding of quantitative findings. Measures Youth responded to questions about themselves and their family’s characteristics (e.g., demographics, parents’ marital status). Youth indicated whether they had a sibling, and if so,answered all sibling-related questions about their sibling closest in age. Family SES was determined by adolescents’ reports of mothers’ education levels (1 ¼ high school or less; 2 ¼ some college or associates degree; 3 ¼ bachelor’s degree or higher).
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Parents’ messages to leave the area Parents’ messages to leave the area were assessed by youths’ response to one item: “Are you and your closest sibling in age equally encouraged by your parents (or guardians) to think about leaving the community?” Youth indicated 1 ¼ Yes, equally, 2 ¼ No, me more, 3 ¼ No, my sibling more, or 4 ¼ Neither of us. These groupings were maintained for analyses and are commonly used when assessing PDT. Chi-squared analyses that explored differences in the four categories of parents’ messages (i.e., Yes, Equal; Me More; Sibling More; Neither) by youth sex, grade level, parents’ marital status, and mother’s education level were not significant. A cross-check between what youth reported for this survey item and the nature of mother’s messages revealed in the qualitative interviews (which did not directly ask about the four possible message categories) was high and showed a 78% overlap. Youth well-being Youth well-being was determined by measures of self-esteem and depressive symptoms. Four items (adapted from Rosenberg, 1979) measured self-esteem (e.g., “I have a number of good qualities”) on a scale ranging from 0 ¼ Strongly disagree through 3 ¼ Strongly agree. The alpha was .82. Depressive symptoms were indexed by seven items (adapted from the CES-D; Radloff, 1977). For example, youth indicated in the last six months how often they felt sad on a 4-point scale (0 ¼ Not at all through 3 ¼ Almost all the time). The alpha was .84. Parent and sibling relationship warmth Parent and sibling relationship warmth was measured by two scales. Parent–child warmth (adapted from Johnson et al., 2005) was a composite of eight items (four for each parent) that included items such as “I feel close to my mother/father” and “I really enjoy spending time with my mother/father” which were rated on a five-point scale (1 ¼ Strongly disagree through 5 ¼ Strongly agree; alpha ¼ .74). Youths’ reports of sibling warmth were measured by five items adapted from Kramer and Baron (1985). Youth responded to items such as “I feel close to my brother/sister” on a four-point scale (1 ¼ Not at all through 4 ¼ A lot). The alpha was .87. Future residential plans Youths’ future residential plans were determined by four items asking youth how important it is to “live in the town you grew up in” and “leave this area” and the likelihood of “leaving the area” and “staying in the area” on a seven-point scale (0 ¼ not at all important/likely through 6 ¼ very important/likely). Items were coded so that a higher score indicated youth planned on leaving the area. The alpha was .71. Analysis plan Our analyses of the qualitative data included developing coding categories through our immersion in multiple close readings of the transcripts as well as our a priori substantive interest regarding parents’ encouragement of their children to leave or stay in the area (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Two trained independent coders closely reviewed each interview transcript for the defined substantive categories (e.g., leave the area, leave and return, stay in the area). This detailed reading allowed the coders to isolate all narratives that exemplified certain points or associations related to youth leaving or staying in the area. For example, within the category of ‘leave the area’ concepts related to ‘getting out’, moving out of the area, and a need to leave for economic opportunities emerged. The three categories were analyzed for similarities and differences between experiences and ideas in a process aimed at informing the broader framework of findings. Throughout the process, we sought to maintain a clear framework that would provide a faithful expression of the participants’ messages regarding their own or their children’s future. Two independent coders of the text had high inter-rater agreement (above 80%) and met to discuss any discrepancies in interpretation. Code-recode reliability was greater than 95%. Using the quantitative data, we first describe youths’ perceptions of the nature of parents’ messages to leave the area, highlighting the frequency of parents’ different messages and the consistency in parents’ messages to their children. To help understand the nature of parents’ messages and perhaps why parents give particular messages to their children participating in our study, we turned to the qualitative interviews. One-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for parents’ marital status, mothers’ education level, sibling age gap, and number of siblings was conducted with the quantitative data to examine the links between parents’ messages and our three outcome variables of youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preferences. These analyses further examined whether parental messages interact with sex such that the above relationships differ for males and females. Tukey follow-up tests were conducted to interpret significant effects and Cohen’s d statistic (Cohen, 1988) was calculated as a measure of effect size. Results Frequency and nature of parents’ messages A frequency analysis of youths’ perceptions of their parents’ messages to them and their closest sibling to leave the area showed that 54% (n ¼ 188) believed that their parents encouraged either one or both of them to leave the area while 46% (n ¼ 159) perceived that their parents did not encourage one or both of them to leave the area (see Table 1). Of the group of
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Table 1 Percents and ns of parents’ encouragement to youth and their closest sibling to leave the area groups (N ¼ 334). Leave (n ¼ 188)
Stay (n ¼ 146)
Yes, both equally told to leave (35%; n ¼ 122) Youth encouraged more than sibling (11%; n ¼ 37) Sibling encouraged more than youth (8%; n ¼ 29) Total % 54
Neither told to leave (n ¼ 146)
46
youth that reported being encouraged to leave the area (n ¼ 188), 122 of them reported that their parents gave this message equally to them and their closest sibling in age. A larger percentage of the mothers who participated in the interviews indicated that they encouraged their children to leave the area compared to youths’ survey reports of parents’ messages (almost three-fourths, n ¼ 19, compared to 54% of the survey data). Interviewed mothers often cited economic opportunity as their reason for encouraging their children to leave. One mother said: “You know, I know it’s.what the salary range is up here. And if they want to make money, this is not the place to do it.” Youth also seemed to have this perspective as well. For example, one female youth said: “You stay home and have kids and there’s the work force.cashiers, I don’t want to be that. I want to go farther than that.” Another mother said: “There’s so much more out there. And he’d have more opportunities if he wasn’t here. And it would break my heart the day he leaves, but I want him to succeed and be happy.” A youth said: “They [her parents] want me to go. They just want me to try my hardest so I can make sure I go..” Finally, another mother relayed her reasoning in terms of encouraging adolescent identity exploration: “No. I don’t want her to stay in the area. I want her to leave after high school and if she wants to return after that that’s fine. But I want her to go and see other things. I think it would be a good experience.” Representing 19% of the survey participants reporting being encouraged to leave the area by their parents were youth who indicated that their parents’ messages were inconsistent between them and their closest sibling. Thirty-seven youth reported they were more encouraged by their parents to leave the area than was their closest sibling (11%). Twenty-nine youth (8%) indicated that their sibling closest in age was encouraged more by their parents to leave the area than were they. When asked by the interviewer if his parents talked to him about future plans, one youth replied, “Not really. They’re more focused on him (middle brother).” Two mothers specifically mentioned PDT in the qualitative interviews. A mother of a son and a daughter stated her reasons why she had given differential messages to her children in the following way: I don’t see him succeeding in.see, if he doesn’t get out, he’s going to be flipping burgers.She could stay here and.she would get like an LNE (Licensed Nurse Education) license or work with the elderly, or be on a committee or something like that. Another mother, when asked if she would encourage her children to stay in the area, said: I would .with her, yes, with my son, no. Because my son wants to be a paleontologist.he wants to go to school. So he knows where he wants to go and what he has to do. She’s still up in the air. She could be a vet [or] a teacher. Those are things you can do up here. Although sex differences did not emerge in the survey question about the likelihood of being encouraged to leave the area, evidence from some of the interviews suggest that child characteristics may be linked to parents’ differential messages among siblings. Forty-six percent of surveyed youth (n ¼ 164) reported that their parents had neither encouraged them nor their sibling to leave the area. One mother said: “What I hope, I hope he does what he wants to do. Um, I don’t ever think about.I don’t transfer my hopes onto my kids.” Another mother echoed that same sentiment: “It’s all up to him. It would be nice to have him close, but if he didn’t want to, I would support him, anywhere he wants to.” One youth seemed to echo this mother’s belief, “Uh, no. They support my decisions and that’s why they bought me books and that’s why they bought me the camera because they, you know, want me to explore my ideas, explore my thoughts.” Three of the mothers from the qualitative sample had encouraged their children to stay. When the interviewer asked one mother about her goals for her son, she replied: “Farming.I see him in this area. I don’t picture him going anywhere.” Three of the mothers who participated in the qualitative interviews were unsure whether they wanted their child to stay or to leave the community. Parents’ messages and youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference The ANCOVAs exploring differences in self-esteem and depressive symptoms by the four groups of parents’ messages of encouragement to leave the area (Yes, Equal; Me More; Sibling More; Neither) were significant (F (11, 337) ¼ 3.53, p < .001; F (11, 337) ¼ 4.09, p < .001, respectively). Youths’ self-esteem was higher in the Yes, Equal and Neither groups than in the Me More and Sibling More groups, suggesting consistency in parents’ messages was associated with greater youth self-esteem (d’s ranged from .42 to .64). Although the model was significant for the depressive symptoms analysis, the effect for parents’ messages was nonsignificant (see Table 2). The interaction terms between parents’ messages and youth sex were nonsignificant in both models.
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Table 2 Means and standard deviations of youth well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference by parents’ encouragement to youth and their closest sibling to leave the area groups. Variable
Self-esteem Depressive symptoms P–C warmth Sibling warmth Future residence
Yes, equal (n ¼ 122)
Me more (n ¼ 37)
Sibling more (n ¼ 29)
Neither (n ¼ 159)
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
2.37a .80a 3.73a 2.67a 3.57ac
.55 .60 .78 .80 1.35
2.01b 1.08a 3.39a 2.14b 3.91a
.58 .72 .78 .98 1.25
2.09b .67a 3.68a 2.57a 3.20c
.67 .43 .70 .79 1.26
2.36a .82a 3.75a 2.65a 3.15bc
.61 .63 .72 .82 1.43
Note: Means sharing a common superscript are not statistically different from one another.
The models for warmth in the parent–child and sibling relationships were significant (F (11, 337) ¼ 2.45, p ¼ .01; F (11, 337) ¼ 3.47, p < .001, respectively). Although the main effect for parents’ messages and the interaction between parents’ messages and youth sex were nonsignificant predictors in the parent warmth model, a main effect for parents’ messages was significant in the model of sibling warmth. Follow-up tests showed that those youth in the Me More group reported the lowest warmth with their closest sibling compared to youth in the Yes, Equal, Sibling More, and Neither groups (d’s ranged from .54 to .67), perhaps indicating that being singled out by parents’ encouragement to leave the area may have implications for, or is the result of, less warmth in sibling relationships (see Table 2). The interaction term between parents’ message group and youth sex was nonsignificant. Youth reported that they were more likely to leave the area after high school if they and their closest sibling were equally encouraged to leave by their parents (F (11, 337) ¼ 2.69, p ¼ .002) than if neither of them were encouraged (d ¼ .30). In addition, youth who were encouraged to leave more than their closest sibling were less likely to want to stay in the area than youth in the Sibling More and Neither (d’s ¼ .57) groups (see Table 2). The Parent message X Youth sex interaction term was nonsignficant. Information from the qualitative interviews also highlights this congruence among parents’ messages and youths’ future residential plans: Of the 24 interviews for which we had complete interview data from mother and child, 17 (71%) demonstrated similarity in parent messages and youths’ future plans. For example, one mother said of her son “For economics in this town, there’s not a lot to offer if you stay here” and when her son was asked of his future plans he replied “I would like to move away.” Inspection of the future residential plans variable showed that about half of the youth indicated that they wanted to leave the area in the future. Discussion For the rural adolescents in the current study, their identity development and future plans are influenced by the decadeslong challenging economic and social conditions in their home towns that likely limit opportunities for youth success in adulthood. Because identity development takes place within interpersonal relationships (Erikson, 1968), rural parents have an important socializing role in youths’ decisions regarding youths’ future plans. In the current study, by using a quantitative survey and an in-depth qualitative approach, we were able to employ a nuanced approach to shed light on rural parents’ relative encouragement of their children to leave the area and how the pattern of congruence among parents’ messages is linked to their adolescent children’s well-being, family relationship experiences, and future residential preference. Importantly, caution is warranted about making conclusions about the direction of effects due to our cross-sectional data. Consistent with extant studies, we posited that parents’ messages predict well-being, family relationship experiences and future residential preference. It is possible, however, that the nature of the relationship between parents’ messages and our outcomes of interest is bi-directional. Ultimately, longitudinal data are required to better understand the relationships between these variables. About half of youth reported that their parents encouraged them to leave the area, and the frequency of this message did not differ by sex. Our qualitative data suggested parents encouraged their children to leave due to the area’s lack of stable and economically rewarding opportunities in the local area (N.H. Dept. of Labor, 2007). Though not the focus of our study, it is worth mentioning that parents’ messages did not differ by mothers’ educational status. This finding could be due to a number of possibilities. As noted previously, parents may or may not provide direction to their children about whether to leave or stay because they are distracted by their own economic pressures (Whitbeck et al., 1997) or, as indicated by this study, parents may have a belief in not interfering in their children’s future planning. Also, it may be that the economic conditions of the area may be more relevant than families’ own economic status. Our work provides insights into parental socialization of rural youths’ future residential preferences but should be considered preliminary because our sample is drawn from northern New Hampshire and should not be considered to be representative of the economic conditions, typical occupations, and ethnicity that characterize other rural areas in the U.S. (Hamilton, Hamilton, Duncan, & Colocousis, 2008). In addition, the nature of the information garnered from our qualitative subsample may be limited by our exclusion of 11th graders and their mothers who may be having more detailed conversations about the future than would seventh grade youth and their parents. However, our qualitative data did show that parents and their children are having these kinds of conversations as early as seventh grade. In this study, we explored a new domain of PDT: parents’ differential encouragement of siblings to leave their home communities. A strength of this study was our use of youths’ reports of PDT because parents overestimate equal treatment of
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their children (Atzaba-Poria & Pike, 2008; Coldwell et al., 2008) and children’s reports of PDT are more closely connected to their psychosocial functioning (Coldwell et al., 2008). Our large sample enabled us to find infrequent but important and distinct intra-family variations in PDT (Barber & East, 2009; Foster, 2002) with 19% of youth reporting inconsistency in parents’ messages to leave the area across youth and their closest sibling. The qualitative data provided some insight into parents’ reasoning for giving different messages across children that reflect the possible influence of child characteristics. Although no sex differences emerged in the survey item assessing parents’ encouragement to leave the area, information from the qualitative interviews suggest that youth sex may play a role in parents’ motivations to encourage their children to stay or leave the community. Due to the limits of our data, however, it is unclear whether youths’ perceptions of rural parents’ differential encouragement of their children to leave the area reflect a parenting investment strategy (Becker, 1991) in the child parents believed would be most successful and provide support to them in the future. Future work could explicitly explore the reasons parents give their children differential encouragement to leave the area. Also, future studies could explore the extent of PDT for all siblings in the family. Most of the families in our study had only two children and our work was limited by our inability to capture the PDT of parental messages for those siblings in larger families. Our findings suggest that the consistency of parents’ messages mattered more than the nature of parents’ messages for youths’ well-being and family relationship experiences. Equal treatment of youth and their closest sibling, regardless of the presence or absence of the messages to leave the area, was associated with youths’ better well-being and positive family relationship experiences. In those families characterized by PDT, youth reported lower psychosocial functioning relative to youth who reported equal treatment. This pattern was surprising for youth who reported being the child encouraged by their parents to leave the area given that other studies have reported that leaving the area is viewed favorably by rural youth (Johnson et al., 2005). PDT, however, has frequently been linked to lower well-being and negative family relationship quality (e.g., McHale et al., 2000). Because siblings are a constant and natural point of social comparison in the family (McHale, Kim, & Whiteman, 2006), perceptions of favoritism may be a particularly powerful influence on youths’ psychosocial functioning regardless of the extent of positivity in each child’s parent–child relationship. Our work provides new insights into PDT and highlights the indirect effect siblings can have on each other through their influence on each other’s family experiences and roles. Our data, however, were limited because we only had data from one child per family and our analyses of the quantitative data were exclusively based on youths’ self reports. To fully capture the varied experiences of children within the same family, future work could include reports of well-being and family relationship experiences from multiple family members to limit the effects of shared method variance. Extending the work on parents’ role in youths’ future occupational and academic plans (Jodl, Michael, Malanchuk, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001), our findings showed that rural parents’ messages to their children to leave the area are connected to youths’ reports of their future residential preferences. The perceived similarity of parents and youths’ views may indicate that parents’ messages play an important role in rural youth outmigration trends (Heath, 2004). Conversely, because we are limited by our cross-sectional data, the pattern of findings may indicate that parents’ messages merely reflect a youth’s decision to leave the area or how well youth are doing. Future work could explore both mothers’ and fathers’ messages and the extent to which the congruence in parents’ messages are associated with youths’ future residential preferences in other rural areas of the U.S. The current study represents one of the first attempts to understand the familial processes by which rural youth choose to leave their home communities. Our investigation was enhanced by survey and interview data enabling us to offer insights into parental socialization of rural youths’ future residential preferences. Although sex differences did not emerge, the study’s findings showed that the nature and consistency of rural parents’ messages to their children have important links to youth well-being and family experiences. Our work also extends the current work on PDT by exploring a new domain of PDT in a rural, economically-vulnerable context. Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and the Carsey Institute. We are grateful to the parents and youth who participated in this project. We thank Meghan Mills and Bridget Farmer for help with analyses and Eleanor Jaffee and a team of graduate and undergraduate students for their help with data collection and entry. References Atzaba-Poria, N., & Pike, A. (2008). Correlates of parental differential treatment: parental and contextual factors during middle childhood. Child Development, 79, 217–232. Barber, J. S., & East, P. L. (2009). Home and parenting resources available to siblings depending on their birth intention status. Child Development, 80, 921– 939. Becker, G. S. (1991). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Coldwell, J., Pike, A., & Dunn, J. (2008). 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